Market Rules

The UK has a range of different exchanges on which equity and debt securities can be traded. Each of these has a different set of (or combination of sets of) applicable rules for financial reporting. Some of these rules were implemented in the UK as a result of European Law, and remain part of UK Law after the UK's exit from the EU. Other rules are UK specific and imposed and policed by the FCA's primary market functions (link to Fin­an­cial Conduct Au­thor­ity website) – a de­part­ment of the Fin­an­cial Conduct Au­thor­ity (FCA) (formerly known as the UK Listing Authority (UKLA). 

UK markets are of two types; those that are ‘reg­u­lated’ for the pur­poses of the Markets in Fin­an­cial In­stru­ments Dir­ect­ive (MiFID) as implemented in the UK and those that are not, including exchange regulated markets and multilateral trading facilities.

The list of UK regulated markets maintained by the FCA can be found here (link to FCA website). The definition of 'regulated market' excludes companies traded on AIM and AQSE Growth Market but includes companies traded on the AQSE Exchange Main Market.

The rules of these markets are, broadly, set out in the following places:

    • the FCA’s Prospectus Rules  (link to FCA hand­book), which set out the rules for issuing a pro­spectus – re­quired to make a public of­fer­ing of se­cur­it­ies and/or to seek ad­mis­sion to trading on a UK reg­u­lated market;
    • the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules  (link to FCA hand­book), which set out the rules for ongoing dis­clos­ure which cover peri­odic fin­an­cial re­port­ing and no­ti­fic­a­tion of in­terests in shares; and
    • the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), which sets out rules to prevent market abuse in­clud­ing rules around the dis­clos­ure and control of inside in­form­a­tion and dis­clos­ure of deal­ings in shares by dir­ect­ors and other senior man­age­ment of issuers. MAR represents direct retained EU law and therefore continues to form part of UK law after exit from the EU.

The Listing Rules page includes information for companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.